Clients First: The Two Word Miracle

Perspective

Do you realize that your right eye doesn’t see the same thing your left eye sees? Try a little experiment. Hold your right hand about six inches in front of your face. Now close your left eye and look at your hand and what you see beyond it. Then close your right eye and look with your left eye. You are seeing two different scenes. This is because your right eye is seeing your hand and what is around it from the right side of your head and your left eye’s viewpoint is from the left side. It is because we see from these two different points that we can judge depth and distance. People with the use of only one eye complain that they cannot tell how far away things are. They have trouble driving a car or even grabbing a doorknob. They lack perspective.

Before Clients First, we lacked perspective. JoAnn and I looked at the world through our eyes and our eyes only. We had gone through our growing-up years, a time when we knew everything and prided ourselves on being able to argue any side of any issue. This was, however, only a sophomoric attempt at open-mindedness, which, of course, we also knew all about. As we got older, our minds narrowed as our waists grew broader. When we found ourselves that night committing to taking care of the client, no matter how it served or didn’t serve us, we realized we had to change our perspective.

To put Clients First, we had to see the world through their eyes. We had to care about getting them what they wanted. We had to turn it around. ...